Double Indemnity

Tautly narrated and excruciatingly suspenseful, Double Indemnity gives us an X-ray view of guilt, of duplicity, and of the kind of obsessive, loveless love that devastates everything it touches. First published in 1936, this novel reaffirmed James M. Cain as a virtuoso of the roman noir.

Mildred Pierce

Mildred Pierce had gorgeous legs, a way with a skillet, and a bone-deep core of toughness and determination. She used those attributes to survive a divorce in 1940s America with two children and to claw her way out of poverty, becoming a successful businesswoman. But Mildred also had two weaknesses: a yen for shiftless men and an unreasoning devotion to her monstrous daughter.

The Big Sleep

Los Angeles PI Philip Marlowe is working for the Sternwood family. Old man Sternwood, crippled and wheelchair-bound, is being given the squeeze by a blackmailer and he wants Marlowe to make the problem go away. But with Sternwood's two wild, devil-may-care daughters prowling LA's seedy backstreets, Marlowe's got his work cut out - and that's before he stumbles over the first corpse.

The Lady in the Lake

Derace Kingsley's wife ran away to Mexico to get a quickie divorce and marry a Casanova-wannabe named Chris Lavery. Or so the note she left her husband insisted. Trouble is, when Philip Marlowe asks Lavery about it he denies everything and sends the private investigator packing with a flea lodged firmly in his ear. But when Marlowe next encounters Lavery, he's denying nothing - on account of the two bullet holes in his heart.

Laura

Laura Hunt was the ideal modern woman: beautiful, elegant, highly ambitious, and utterly mysterious. No man could resist her charmsnot even the hardboiled NYPD detective sent to find out who turned her into a faceless corpse. As this tough cop probes the mystery of Lauras death, he becomes obsessed with her strange power.

Farewell My Lovely

Eight years ago Moose Malloy and cute little redhead Velma were getting married - until someone framed Malloy for armed robbery. Now his stretch is up and he wants Velma back. PI Philip Marlow meets Malloy one hot day in Hollywood and, out of the generosity of his jaded heart, agrees to help him. Dragged from one smoky bar to another, Marlowe's search for Velma turns up plenty of dangerous gangsters with a nasty habit of shooting first and talking later.

Red Harvest

When the last honest citizen of Poisonville was murdered, the Continental Op stayed on to punish the guilty--even if that meant taking on an entire town. Red Harvest is more than a superb crime novel: it is a classic exploration of corruption and violence in the American grain. From the author of The Maltese Falcon.

The Cocktail Waitress

Grieving widow or black widow? The day Joan Medford buried her husband was a fateful one - because before the day was out she'd meet the two men who would change her life forever. Forced to take a job waitressing to support herself and her child, Joan finds herself caught between the handsome young schemer whose touch she comes to crave and the wealthy older man whose touch repels her…but who otherwise would make a tempting husband number two. It's a classic Cain triangle - brutal and sexual and stark - that can only end in death. But for whom, the guilty…or the innocent?

The Glass Key

Paul Madvig was a cheerfully corrupt ward-heeler who aspired to something better: the daughter of Senator Ralph Bancroft Henry, the heiress to a dynasty of political purebreds. Did he want her badly enough to commit murder? And if Madvig was innocent, which of his dozens of enemies was doing an awfully good job of framing him? Dashiell Hammett’s tour de force of detective fiction combines an airtight plot, authentically venal characters, and writing of telegraphic crispness. A one-time detective and a master of deft understatement, Hammett invented the noir crime novel.

Raymond Chandler: The High Window (Dramatised)

Philip Marlowe’s on a case: his client, a dried-up husk of a woman, wants him to recover a rare gold coin called a Brasher Doubloon, missing from her late husband’s collection. That’s the simple part. It becomes more complicated when Marlowe finds that everyone who handles the coin suffers a run of very bad luck: they always end up dead.

Niels J. Rasmussen says:"Too Many Twists & Turns To Transfer Well To Radio"

The Long Goodbye

Down-and-out drunk Terry Lennox has a problem: his millionaire wife is dead and he needs to get out of LA fast. So he turns to his only friend in the world: Philip Marlowe, Private Investigator. He's willing to help a man down on his luck, but later, Lennox commits suicide in Mexico and things start to turn nasty. Marlowe finds himself drawn into a sordid crowd of adulterers and alcoholics in LA's Idle Valley, where the rich are suffering one big suntanned hangover.

The Maltese Falcon

Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon, first serialized in a magazine in 1930, is best known through the iconic Humphrey Bogart film of 1941. But it was the book that created the classic "noir" genre with its tough private detective threading his cool way between the criminals and the law. Sam Spade, the private eye solving the mystery of the Maltese statuette, was the template for Philip Marlowe and a host of others…. but they come no more shrewd and cunning with Hammett peppering the text with one-liners.

Raymond Chandler: Farewell My Lovely (Dramatised)

Toby Stephens stars in this BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation of Raymond Chandler’s second Philip Marlowe mystery.Fast-talking, trouble-seeking private eye Philip Marlowe is a different kind of detective: a moral man in an amoral world. California in the ’40s and ’50s is as beautiful as a ripe fruit and rotten to the core, and Marlowe must struggle to retain his integrity amidst the corruption he encounters daily.In ‘Farewell My Lovely’, Marlowe has a chance encounter with a not-so-gentle giant outside Florian’s nightclub.

Raymond Chandler: The Big Sleep (Dramatised)

A brand new BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation of a classic Raymond Chandler mystery featuring private eye, Philip Marlowe. Los Angeles PI Philip Marlowe is working for the Sternwood family. Old man Sternwood, crippled and wheelchair-bound, is being given the squeeze by a blackmailer and he wants Marlowe to make the problem go away.

The High Window

Philip Marlowe's on a case: his client, a dried-up husk of a woman, wants him to recover a rare gold coin called a Brasher Doubloon, missing from her late husband's collection. That's the simple part. It becomes more complicated when Marlowe finds that everyone who handles the coin suffers a run of very bad luck: they always end up dead. That's also unlucky for a private investigator, because leaving a trail of corpses around LA gets cops' noses out of joint.

The Little Sister

Her name is Orfamay Quest and she's come all the way from Manhattan, Kansas, to find her missing brother Orrin. Or leastways that's what she tells PI Philip Marlowe, offering him a measly twenty bucks for the privilege. But Marlowe's feeling charitable - though it's not long before he wishes he wasn't so sweet. You see, Orrin's trail leads Marlowe to luscious movie starlets, uppity gangsters, suspicious cops and corpses with ice picks jammed in their necks.

No Stone Unturned: The True Story of the World's Premier Forensic Investigators

No Stone Unturned recreates the genesis of NecroSearch International: a small ,eclectic group of scientists and law enforcement personal, active and retired, who volunteer their services to help locate the clandestine graves of murder victims and recover the remains and evidence to assist with the apprehension and conviction of the killers.

Cinnamon Kiss: A Novel

It is the Summer of Love as Cinnamon Kiss opens, and Easy Rawlins is contemplating robbing an armored car. It's farther outside the law than Easy has ever traveled, but his daughter, Feather, needs a medical treatment that costs far more than Easy can earn or borrow in time. And his friend Mouse tells him it's a cinch. Then another friend, Saul Lynx, offers a job that might solve Easy's problem without jail time.

Publisher's Summary

Tautly narrated and excruciatingly suspenseful, Double Indemnity gives us an X-ray view of guilt, of duplicity, and of the kind of obsessive, loveless love that devastates everything it touches. First published in 1936, this novel reaffirmed James M. Cain as a virtuoso of the roman noir.

Classic book from which the "film noir" of the same name is based. This is a story of seedy seduction, double dealing and intrigue leading to ultimate doom. Film ends quite a bit differently from the book, but bottom line is that these two main characters really deserve each other. This is a good presentation, capably read. I found it quite an entertaining listen and give it a solid recommendation.

It’s probably above average for readers who like hard-boiled crime fiction noir.

It’s famous so I was curious. It’s told in first person by Walter Huff. At times he talks directly to the reader using the word “you.” Walter is an insurance salesman. He sounds like a good salesman – a smart guy. But he’s a dweeb or goof or something odd when it comes to love. He talks to a woman a couple times and claims he’s in love. Something happens and he is immediately out of love. He talks to another woman a couple times and says that is true love. And when he loves someone, murder is just something to do for them. Weird. But I like weird things.

Although, his murder motive is not just for love. Huff claims the big score appeals to him. And since he’s an insurance guy he knows how to get around the problems.

The main story is about two people planning a murder. They are the bad guys. We are never in the murder victim’s head. We are in the good guys’ heads just briefly – when we listen to insurance company executives discuss the insurance claim. That part was a little boring.

I did not like the ending. It was disappointing and vague. I had to make assumptions. It was bad news for the bad guys, so I suppose that makes it a happy ending for good guys. But I wanted something more.

This was written in 1935-36. There’s something neat about the dialogue. The writer did not grow up watching TV, movies, etc. So he sounds different from contemporary writers. I liked it. There is a directness about it.

Double Indemnity; when Cain is good, he is brilliant. Who else writes crime like this-sudden and gripping? Not word that doesn't drive the story forward with a you-are-thereness few writers can rival. Crime in Cain's novel is like an impulsive, illicit passion, when it's done, the partners separate in mutual disaffection. The intricate insurance scam and murder plot is masterful. Cain's style is odd yet apt and he can write dialogue with the real rhythm of speech and remarkably, Cain's language doesn't feel dated. I found that the terse, controlled tone of the narrator, James Naughton, exactly suited Walter Huff, telling us just how it was, his nightmare venture into crime.

I have already listened to this several times -- sometimes as soon as I have finished it I start it from the beginning again.

What did you like best about this story?

Double Indemnity (the original) is my favorite movie, and although I knew that the story was quite different (I knew some of the twists that the movie left out so they didn't surprise me), I had not expected it to be this good. Seeing Phyllis -- and her doomed husband-- Lola, Nino, Norton and especially Keyes through Walter Huff's embittered eyes adds a dimension to them that the narration in the film doesn't really show. This doesn't take anything away from the film, and I am glad that Billy Wilder had the sense to stay out of the weeds that this story takes its readers into.

Which scene was your favorite?

There were a couple of them that were not in the film. The scene in which Phyllis and Walter are bickering in the car after the murder was a hoot. (She tries to throw him out of the car and he threatens to "sock" her.) The scene in which Barton Keyes figures out how the murder was arranged and blows his stack over how Norton had botched the claim was a close second.

Sometimes that narrator seemed to slip into what I can only call "a Goodfellas accent." It was rather jarring and sporadic, but this is just a small quibble in what was generally a riveting and well-told story.

Written in 1936, this is one of those old fashioned novels in which the main character narrates to the reader. It is a cute form of writing and takes me back to my youth watching those old black and white detective movies. "Her dress was in the hollywood style and could not hide the body that was in it and she knew it." Not an exact quote but close. In this short novel the main character falls in love with two different women, based on looks alone. He kills for one woman who he barely knows. He is an insurance salesman who knows all the angels. He plans the murder and they carry it out. He does this to get $50,000. His only claim to the 50 would be if the wife wants to share. He does not seem to think this is a problem though. It is all very cleverly planned and carried out. Like in all murders, there are some twists and it seems he does not know his lover that well. Like in the Postman Always Rings Twice, which I liked better, he actually gets away with it, but ends up paying for it in the end.

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